Cloak and Dagger
by Metrophor
Summary: Thanks to a certain Daedric Prince of Revelry, a perpetually-angry master thief, and an easily-sidetracked idiot of a Dragonborn, the trip to Snow Veil Sanctum doesn't go quite as planned. Shenanigans -and sweetrolls- ensue. (Minor spoilers for the Thieves Guild questline.)
1. In Which Our Hero Is Easily Sidetracked

******************Title**: _Cloak And Dagger_**************  
****Pairing**: Cracky gen fic, unless you tilt your head and look at it sideways; F!Dragonborn (Dunmer) and Mercer Frey**********  
********************Spoilers**: Mild ones for the Thieves' Guild questline; read at your own risk if you haven't gotten as far as '_Speaking With Silence_'.

**********A/N**: Delvin insists that everything in this fic is the gods' honest truth. The Dragonborn and Mercer Frey, of course, steadfastly deny it. Which party is correct, I'll leave up to you to decide- thieves, as we know, are all consummate liars.

* * *

**Cloak And Dagger**

* * *

Mercer Frey -Nightingale, _de facto _leader of the Thieves Guild, and leading candidate for 'Surliest Man Alive'- took a deep breath, counted to ten, and reminded himself that murdering Brynjolf's protege in full view of an audience would be imprudent. For the third time. In as many minutes.

The trip to Snow Veil Sanctum had started out well enough. If the sight of two heavily-armed thieves, marching purposefully out Riften's main gate in broad daylight, had raised a few eyebrows amongst the guard... well, they at least had the good sense to get out of the way and keep their collective mouths shut. The sun had been high, the clouds few, and the weather unusually warm for the end of Autumn.

It lasted until they were approximately three miles outside of Windhelm. The sun, trapped behind strata of darkening cloud, had caught its outline just as they crested the final snow-blanketed hill. Its dying rays threw the city into sharp black relief, and turned every hair on his companion's head to copper fire. If he'd been in any way sentimental, he might have considered the scene beautiful. As it was, he only caught her by the elbow and grumbled something about wanting to reach Snow Veil before they lost their daylight.

That, of course, was when the blizzard hit.

That sodding, crows-cursed blizzard. Mercer rubbed a hand across his brow, in a futile attempt to massage away the headache he could feel building there. It had come up out of the west like a fiend, without warning, slapping the duo in the face with a white so oppressively thick it obscured everything beyond a few inches away, and a cold so shockingly intense it drove the breath from his lungs.

Somehow, between a great deal of inventive swearing (Mercer), precise applications of Thu'um (his Dunmeri associate), and sheer floundering luck (both of them), they'd managed to fetch up against the outer walls of Windhelm itself. With the wind driving needle shards of ice through every exposed inch of flesh, and nightfall sweeping in like a hand, it was patently obvious they wouldn't make their destination until after the snow settled.

_If_ it settled. Blizzards, Mercer reflected dourly into his ale, had been known to last for days. He'd never understand how the Nords could stand to _live_in this shit. And setback or not, he added internally, being holed up in Candlehearth Hall wouldn't have been nearly as annoying if not for his traveling companion's increasingly bizarre antics.

Nalvyna Sondryn was a lot of things. On the shorter side of average (as dark elves went), she was all slate-grey skin, soft edges and lithe enthusiasm, with a gentle rounding to her features that likely made her look younger than she actually was. The elf was a decent enough lockpicker, he supposed, and -if her friendly rivalry with Cynric and Neruin was any indication- a certifiable terror with a bow. She didn't _look_much like a glittering alehouse legend... but then, he supposed, legends rarely did.

At that very moment, for example, she had one arm draped over a sallow-looking Breton in black (Sam something-or-other; Mercer hadn't been paying much attention), the other over a wayward member of the guard, and was swaying from side to side between them in a manner that was both hypnotic and smacking of inebriation. One eyelid drooped at half-mast as she pulled their heads in toward hers, the tone of her speech conspiratorial even if the volume was not.

"No, no, no, you... you don' unnerstand," she slurred, casting a wary glance at the ceiling. "She's allas watchin' me. _Allas_. Guidin' me wif these..." -the dark elf's fingers wiggled in illustration- "...giant, invisible hands. Makin' me DO STUFF. And then LAUGHING about it!"

Nal's eyes fixed blurrily on a spot somewhere above the tavern, jabbing an accusatory finger at it (and nearly dragging both herself, and her two companions, to the floor in the process). "I see you up there, you _sadistic blue bitch!_"

Mercer hunched his shoulders. Although he was vaguely impressed that she could manage to string a sentence together at all, her voice -belligerent and burred by alcohol- was not doing any wonders for his headache. He deftly cut the purse strings of a well-to-do patron as he passed by, catching and disappearing the pouch before it fell more than half an inch, and felt marginally better. "_Yeah! Come down __**here**__ 'n' say that!_"

"Woman troubles?" The barmaid, Susannah, sashayed past the Guildmaster, nearly planting her cleavage in his face as she leaned down to take the empty bottle next to his arm. He glanced up at her with a disdainful frown that only deepened, lip curling, at her knowing wink.

"What makes you think that?" Somehow, Frey knew he was going to regret asking the question. Or doing anything, really, besides tossing her a few Septim and telling her to bugger off. The Nord flapped her washrag at him, smiling, and jerked her head at where Nalvyna was currently attempting to hang a spoon off the tip of her nose.

"Oh, it's just that you haven't taken your eyes off her since the two of you came in here." Clearly, the woman couldn't tell the difference between a look of interest, and one of 'I'm going to wear your scalp as a hat'.

"Also, you've stabbed the table a total of thirty-nine times." _Smile._"I counted."

Mercer glanced down at his hand, which, sure enough, was in the process of driving the tip of his Elven-forged dagger into the wood. It looked like a Khajiit had been sharpening its claws on the table. He blinked in confusion. When had that happened?

"I added it to your tab," Susannah told him, her smile widening, and moved on to the other patrons without a backward glance.

She didn't notice that her wrist was lighter by one jade-and-gold bracelet.

Growling under his breath, the Breton hauled himself up out of the chair and stalked toward the little crowd that had sprung up around his companion. Nal was regaling her audience with a very slurred account of what sounded like, of all things, 'giant enemy crabs', and he had to wait until she paused for breath before leaning over to speak in her ear.

"If you so much as breathe a _word_of complaint about a fat head tomorrow," he ground out, savagely, "I'm going to toss you headfirst into the Sea of Ghosts." The threat was undermined somewhat, by the sallow Breton on her far side leaning over to nibble on the tip of her ear. The action elicited a shriek, more of surprise than of outrage, and she slugged the man in the shoulder before collapsing into a torrent of helpless, blushing laughter.

Mercer's jaw tightened, and he briefly considered driving his knife into the bastard's eye. _Onetwothreefourfivesixsevene ightnine-_

He settled for storming off to the lower levels of the inn, throwing his hands up in sheer exasperation as he went. Some time later, the Dragonborn followed, arms draped around Sam's neck as he kept a steadying hand on her waist.

When he opened the door, and the two of them stepped into the frozen, still-stormy outdoors, she squinted at her new friend a little more closely. Behind the fog of alcohol clouding her mind, she noticed that there was something different about him. Something that hadn't been there before. He looked quite a bit more black and red and... _Daedric_... than she remembered.

There was a long, pregnant pause as she scrutinized him (and tried to keep her footing at the same time. It was harder than it looked).

"...Huh. I am okay with thish," she decided, and dropped her head back onto his shoulder.

The two walked off, arm-in-arm, and in moments had disappeared into the blanket of airborne snow.


	2. In Which There Is A Lot Of Yelling

Mercer awoke with a start, instinctively reaching for the pommel of his sword. Judging from the light filtering in through the slats in the wood, it was a little after dawn, and he could no longer hear the unrelenting howl of the storm overhead. The master of the Thieves' Guild was about as far from religious as it was humanly possible to be, but he allowed himself a shallow sigh of relief all the same. They might have a chance at catching Karliah after all.

His relatively peaceful frame of mind lasted right up until the point when he banged on Nalvyna's door, and didn't get a response. The events of the previous night flooded back into his mind, and the older man clenched his teeth in frustration. So help him, if she was unconscious -or worse, purposefully ignoring him- Brynjolf be damned, plans be damned, he was going to turn her ears into a necklace.

_BAM-BAM-BAM._ "Sondryn!" **_BAM-BAM-BAM_****. **"Open the damn door before I kick it down!"**  
**  
It wasn't very thieflike, making so much noise, but the headache was threatening to make a resurgence and Mercer's patience -a strained thing even on the best of days- was decidedly at an end. When he raised his fist a third time, however, the door creaked open: just a crack, but it was enough for him to wedge his foot into the gap and shoulder his way inside.

He was confronted by an empty room.

No. Not just empty. The bed was still neatly made; everything was in its proper order on the tables. The candle on the bedside table had not been lit. The room, in short, had never even been used at all.

_Oh, bloody crows, you have got to be _kidding_ me._

Elda Early-Dawn, true to her name, was already up and about, sweeping out the entry hallway. She started violently when Mercer grabbed her shoulder, clearly unaccustomed to boarders being awake at this hour. When she rounded on him and opened her mouth to ream him out for surprising her, however, something in the grey thief's face made her swallow her words, fingers tightening on the broom handle until they went pale.

"The elf I came in with," he began, raking sleep-bedraggled hair back from his forehead with both hands, "where is she?" The question eared him a blank, deeply disapproving stare. By all the Divines, he did not need this shit. Not at this hour of the morning; not ever.

Fighting down an overwhelming desire to shout the question into the innkeeper's face, he took a deep, steadying breath and tried again. "The _Dunmer_," he insisted, biting each word off as if speaking to a halfwit. "Copper hair. Copper eyes. About this high." He made a gesture slightly above the level of his chin. "She had the room across from mine."

"Oh, yes," Elda replied reluctantly. Crows, her voice was the aural equivalent of nails being driven into his ears. "The dark elf." The way she said it, the term might have been synonymous with _oh yes, the wolfhound shit I just stepped in_. "No, I haven't seen her since last evening." There was a brief hesitation, and then she added: "Jarl Ulfric's men were in here looking for her not long ago; perhaps you should check at the palace."

Mercer bit back an exasperated groan. This was the problem with having a crows-cursed _folk hero_ as backup. Whether by destiny, sorcery, or the perversity of human nature, they attracted an absolutely ludicrous amount of unwanted attention. Everyone within their immediate vicinity, like it or not, got dragged along for the ride. Even so, an irritating lead was better than none at all, and he muttered a grudging word of appreciation before sweeping out the front door. Hero or not, when he caught up to her, he was going to be hard-pressed to _not_ pound Nal's head against the nearest cobblestone.

When he reached the Palace of Kings, however, the master thief found the entrance blocked by a veritable wall of Stormcloaks. They were arranged in a rough semicircle around the terrace, staring down at the flagstones with varying levels of confusion, chagrin, and amusement. In their center, like the eye of a hurricane, stood Ulfric Stormcloak himself.

How anyone had missed the thunder and crash of Thu'um being deployed was a mystery. Although the blizzard last night had indeed been fearsome, and the winds that had borne it unseasonably strong, the words that had been carved into the stone (huge slashes, as if made by the hand of Talos himself, the guards whispered) were so close to the palace doors that someone should have heard their application, regardless.

The head of the Thieves Guild glanced down at the lettering with a complete lack of comprehension, then shifted his eyes to the leader of the Stormcloaks. He hadn't taken his eyes off the carving since Mercer's arrival, a scrap of paper crumpled in his hand, his unyielding Nordic features shifting from pale, to scarlet, and then to nearly black as he mouthed out the syllables. It was a long, tense series of moments before anyone dared to speak.

"Jarl Ulfric," one of the congregation (a young, blonde-haired Stormcloak with eyes the blue of a winter sky) eventually piped up, "what does it mean?"

The mountain of a man shifted his weight, lips contorting as he wrenched his attention away from the ground.

"It says..." Ulfric grated out, his face a mask of conflicting emotions, "...it says..." He inhaled shakily, clearing his throat with a low cough. "It says, '_Dragonborn was here, bitches_.'"

"_Master Frey, my dear and __**bestest**__ of friends even if you are __sometimes, which is to say __often, which is to say_ nearly always_ a surly git,_" the note read, in handwriting so ragged and smudged it was nearly illegible, "_I know I promised to help you with ..._" (Karliah's name had been apparently written and scribbled out several times before Nalvyna had simply given up) "_...wossface in the tomb, but I find myself unavoidably called away. And by unavoidably I mean there was cake involved, which is you have to admit a lot more enticing than slogging around some ancient ruins looking for someone who is trying to kill me._

(Here, an entire two inches of parchment had been scribbled over, the black marks interspersed by what looked suspiciously like fingerprints. He was starting to wonder if the note had been written with a stick of charcoal. He checked his hands. Oh, sod, it _had_been.)

_...Whiterun to pick up some things. Mostly mead. What __**is**__ it with Nords and Mead anyway? Have they never even heard of flin? Mad, I tell you. Anyway. Good luck with the stuff in the place and the things. __I really hope you don't get shot full of arrows because that would be awful and I'd be compelled to go on a rampage and those sorts of things never end well__._

At the very bottom of the letter, in even more illegible script (such that Mercer had to squint and turn the parchment to the side in order to read it), she had added: "_P.S.- Please tell Delvin that I'm very sorry I framed him for that business with the jam in Maven Black-Bitch's socks. It was uncalled for.  
-Nally._"

Mercer stared down at the sad little piece of parchment for several moments, his stance (half-leaning, half-sitting on the bridge that connected Winterhold to the main highway) completely devoid of emotion. Straightening, he looked over his shoulder in the general direction of Snow Veil, going so far as to take a few tentative steps toward it before pausing and turning in the exact opposite direction. Had anyone cared to take notice of him, they would have witnessed something that few people could claim to have ever seen before: Mercer Frey, at a complete and utter loss.

The moment, alas, was as fleeting as a snowflake caught against a windowpane. Crushing the note in his hands until it was tiny enough to fit through a keyhole, he hurled it over the bridge, with such vitriolic force that a guard, standing watch on the wall above, would later claim it had ignited. The action was followed by a torrent of invective nearly as creative as it was vicious; the hapless guard, for example, had never heard someone called a "spongy, weather-beaten boil on Nocturnal's backside" before.

The perpetrator in question, however, was gone before he could request a clarification, bolting off in the direction of the stables like a warthful, overgrown raven. The proprietor had not yet emerged to feed and water the mounts, and so he didn't hear the ensuing commotion when Mercer hefted a traveler (in the process of tying their own mount to a post) by the front of their tight-fitting leather armor, bellowing at them to get out of his way before divesting them of their horse's reins.

The black charger whinnied, rearing in protest, as the thief swung himself up and into the saddle, only quieting when he caught it by the ear and threatened -in a voice boiling over with deadly serious malice- that if it didn't want to be stew meat, it would shut up and behave itself. Ignoring the previous owner's spluttering protests, he pulled its head around to face the highway, and disappeared down the road in a thunder of hooves and a spray of displaced snow.

The traveler stared after them in the following silence, before clapping hand over face and fist upon hip, breathing out a deeply irritated sigh.

"Sithis. That _does_it. I'm going back to bed."

Half a mile away, deep in the bowels of Snow Veil Sanctum, Karliah's shin muscles were beginning to cramp.


	3. In Which Nally Is Hopelessly Lost

Dragged up from unconsciousness by a dull, persistent ache in the vicinity of her left temple, Nalvyna wondered abstractly if she'd fallen and struck her head somehow. It pulsed, sluggishly, in time with her heartbeat, setting the backdrop for smaller, subtler discomforts.

Biting back a groan, she forced herself awake to look around at her surroundings, and instantly wished she hadn't. Vivid light hammered into her retinas, spearing directly into her forebrain like a knife on raw nerves, and her mouth tasted as if something had crawled into it and died there- oh, say, a week or so ago. The elf's eyes snapped shut in an involuntary reflex, her whole body recoiling from the pain as she let out a low groan. Nalvyna was dead. She was dead, and she had annoyed some Daedric Lord without realizing it, and this was the start of what would become an eternity of punishment. It figured. Her mother had always _said _Nal would wind up trapped in an unique and nightmarish level of Oblivion if she didn't stop nicking other people's belongings.

Well, that or she'd get a job as a tax collector for the Empire. It was the same thing, really.

"WAKE UP."

The sharp words, spoken in a merciless voice loud enough to shake dust from the rafters (if there were any rafters; she hadn't had her eyes open long enough to check), swarmed into Nalvyna's hearing like a horde of angry bees. Angry bees that had been decked out in an entire kitchen's worth of pots and pans. Her hands slammed down over her poor, undeserving, tortured ears, and the rest of her tried its level best to curl into as small a target as possible. Ancestors, it was _Dagon_ she'd pissed off, wasn't it? That was utterly _unfair._

She'd tried to be a good person, as remorseless thieving convicts went. She'd never, for example, so much as bludgeoned someone during a five-fingered discount- though gods knew some of them would have deserved it. That fetcher in the Bannered Mare who'd tried to grab her ass, for example. She'd never caused any property damage (well, except for the time she accidentally set Lucan's store on fire, but she'd _really_ wanted to try out that new Shout. It was an honest mistake. Anyone could have done it). Aside from all the petty thefts, blackmail, extortion, rigged bets, and lollygagging, what had she done that was so _wrong_, exactly?

She supposed it didn't really matter, in the long run. She was trapped in some horrible Daedric hell, and the Lord of Destruction was shouting at her to _wake up, I said, you drunken blasphemer_, in a voice that sounded, now that she thought about it, rather oddly feminine. Under the circumstances, the very best she could do would be to summon up enough courage to snark in the face of her tormentor. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.

Taking a deep breath, the dark elf squared her shoulders, tried to find a better grip on the floor, and scraped together enough clarity of mind for a blistering retort.

"Ow," Nalvyna said.

"Don't you '_ow_' me," the person she was beginning to suspect may not have been Mehrunes Dagon after all said. A hand, warm and soft except for the fact that it was gripping her bicep hard enough to bruise, shook her violently, causing the Dunmer's stomach to do a fast roll and dip to the left. She cracked her eyes open a bit at a time (the light was a little less searing now), and found herself staring blearily up into the face of a young woman. The facial expression the Imperial was wearing, however, nearly made Nalvyna wish it _had_ been the Prince of Destruction after all.

"Please whisper," the elf moaned, curling into herself a little more tightly and painting on her best 'I am in horrible pain, pity me' face.

The priestess's antagonistic stance didn't change. "I _am_ whispering," she snapped, every syllable hitting Nal's ears like a dragon chewing on glass, "which is more than you deserve, after you flung _garbage_ everywhere and _**molested our statuary**_." Shifting her grip to the front of Nal's armor, the priestess hauled her to her feet and held her there, every line of her rigid stance suggesting she'd rather be digging her fingers into the housebreaker's throat. Nal took a deep breath, held it, and reminded herself that fainting onto a hard stone floor would be unhelpful, no matter how attractive the prospect seemed at the moment.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she managed, after several tense moments in which she made sure she was _not_ going to vomit on her captor's shoes. "Oh gods... never mind, just tell me how I got here and I'll do whatever you want." She vaguely recalled something about cheese wheels -oh, Azura, _so many cheese wheels_- tumbling merrily down a mountainside and possibly crushing a wayward bandit... but surely, that bit must have been nothing more than an unusually vivid dream.

The Imperial crossed her arms, unimpressed, her eyes drilling into Nal's back as she lurched around her stone enclosure. Over the roaring of the blood rushing through her head, she caught a few snippets of information: _Rorikstead_ and _Dibella is not a climbing wall _stood out the most. There was something that she'd been doing before this whole nightmare had started, Nal recalled... but try as she might, couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

It wasn't until the words _Sam Guevenne _reached her that cold, stark reality finally came crashing down. Her stomach followed it shortly thereafter.

Pushing past Senna, Nalvyna rushed for the bronze-plated double doors separating her from whatever lay outside. There was something horribly familiar about their structure. When she wrenched them open, a blast of frozen air and cold, late-autumn sunlight washed over her face, temporarily blinding her before outlining the smooth granite-and-marble planes of the balcony in front of her. The rushing sound she'd been hearing wasn't her pulse after all. It was a waterfall, and the spray swept down the crooked streets and chiseled walls of a city that, while beautiful, she _absolutely, positively _should not have been in.

_Markarth? __**Markarth?!**__ How the- what the fucking- HOW the fuck did I-?!_

"Oh, shit. Mercer." Nalvyna said, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat. Sweet Meridia's tits, she was a dead elf walking.


	4. In Which Mercer Is An Insufferable Jerk

"You know," Mercer remarked, conversationally, "this would go a lot faster if you just told me where she went, Mallus." He propped a booted foot against the lip of the Honningbrew Meadery vat and leaned forward, in an attempt to relieve some of the strain on his forearm. "You said Nal stopped by here; she must have told you _something_ about where she was going." Being constrained by a narrow window of opportunity was not doing his temper any favors. In spite of having several hours on the road in which to cool off, questioning the citizenry of Whiterun left him with the distinct impression that he was only digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole.

When he'd approached the steward of Dragonsreach, for example, the man had only babbled hysterically about a severed hagraven head that had been left out in the front entryway (from what he'd been able to understand, between all the wordless gibbering, Proventus had tripped over it on his way in), and the Jarl waking up that morning to find himself "entirely cocooned in fruit". Balgruuf himself had not been available, as he was confined to his rooms upon suffering an acute allergic reaction to pears.

He'd been halfway out of town, doing his level best to formulate a plan (_should have just gone back to Riften, reamed out Brynjolf and dragged him along instead..._) when he realized that the high-pitched shouting coming from over near the gates was, in fact, being directed at _him_. It took a supreme effort of will to stop and turn around, as he half-expected it to be the palace staff demanding to know where all the jeweled cutlery had gone.

Instead, he'd been approached by a comparatively tiny Nord woman, panting for breath, her short brown hair dusty and in disarray. She must have been chasing after him throughout the entire town.

The woman's name, she'd told him, was Ysolda, and she _had_ in fact seen his companion just the previous night. She directed him toward the meadery with a wave of the hand and instructions to tell the dark elf that she wasn't off the hook (clearly, she had no idea just how right she was). Ysolda still expected the Septims she was owed. Then she'd tilted her head to the side and scrutinized the master thief from head to foot, before tentatively asking him if he was Nalvyna's fiance.

In retrospect, Mercer thought, perhaps he shouldn't have laughed in her face. At least she'd given him directions before kicking him in the shin.

Speaking of which...

Damn, he'd almost forgotten what he was doing, for a moment there.

"Seriously, Mallus, are you ready to talk to me or not?" Mercer asked, glancing down at the Imperial in annoyance.

"_Blub_," the hapless Imperial replied.

The Guildmaster made a wry sound in the back of his throat and pulled his arm back, allowing Maven's associate to free his head from the vat. He emerged with a series of heavy, lung-clearing coughs, a reek of fermented honey, and more than a little flailing. When he'd finally gotten enough air that the coughing had a chance to subside, he rolled over and tried to feebly drag himself away. The grip on the back of his shirt, alas, prevented him from getting very far. "You're... you're completely insane!"

"No, I'm _impatient_," Mercer replied, as to a very small and slow-witted child. "There's a difference." Shifting his weight, he reset his feet against the lip of the vat, and maneuvered Mallus back toward the opening.

His victim let out an entirely unseemly shriek, jamming his fingers into a gap in the floorboards as he felt himself beginning to slide. "All right, all right, by the Eight!" Mallus's progress toward the edge of the vat ceased at once, though the upper half of his face hung out into empty space. It gave his voice a queerly modulated effect. "She... she said something about heading to Markarth! To the Temple of Dibella! Oh, gods, you can't expect me to remember everything she said; she wasn't even making _sense_!"

Mercer smiled down at him. It was a deeply unsettling expression. "It's refreshing to get a straight answer for once." He shook his head, appealing to some unseen spot near the boilery's ceiling as he dusted his hands off. "I'll never understand why everyone's so determined to make life difficult for me. What a pain in the ass."

He paused for a moment upon standing to leave, as if just recalling something that had heretofore slipped his mind. "I'd throw out that batch, if I were you," he instructed. "Hate to think what Maven would do to you if she found out you were bathing in her Reserve."

Planting a foot in the small of Mallus's back, he leaned away from the Imperial, and shoved.

-

How the hell, Mercer wondered later that evening, had one woman gotten half the length of Skyrim in one night? Aside from the horse he himself had stolen, all of the mounts in the Windhem hostelry had been in place, and the wagoner had not yet left town, so he had to assume she'd done it on foot. Bloody hells, he thought, Vipir would have been green with envy.

Speaking of the aforementioned black charger, it had somehow managed to chew through its reins and bolt for the hills while he had been... _entertaining_... the owner of Maven Black-Briar's newest establishment, which meant that he was on foot. He might have chartered a ride at Whiterun if such a thing had been possible, but apparently there had been some sort of a debacle a few nights before. The words 'funny little man', 'oceans of blood', and what was it... 'ingenious use of a whittled carrot', yes, that was the term the guard captain had used, had been bandied about to explain why the wagoner and horse were nowhere to be seen (and the cart itself upended in a ditch).

The thief hunched his shoulders and pulled his hood lower over his brow, stamping his feet a few times as he walked in an attempt to dislodge the inch or so of frozen mud adhered to his boots. It was getting on toward winter, which meant that daytime on the road was tolerable enough, if you prepared for it. Dusk, however, had a savage bite to it, and nighttime was no time at all to be out in the middle of nowhere- even moreso if that 'nowhere' was rapidly becoming the Reach. The edge of the river cut lower into the ground, and the banks became sheer-cut cliffs and brambles.

Dripping trees blocked the wan remnants of daylight from view, casting the broken cobbles of the main road deeply into shadow. Low fog rolled in as thick as syrup between the stunted claws of juniper and gorse, which told Mercer if he didn't find a town or some other shelter, in short order he was going to be wringing wet. Attention temporarily shifted to where, if any such place could be had, he could settle down that wouldn't ooze moisture, he almost didn't hear the clack of boot heels headed toward him at a dead run.

"Hold it right there!"

For once in his life, Mercer Frey actually did as he was told, rotating to look over his shoulder at the source of the noise. Grey light glinted off the elegant curves and brassy planes of elven armor, outlining the form of a notch-eared Khajiit. His grey fur was patchy and looked as if it was falling out in places, one eye rendered glassy by some ancient sword injury. His teeth were rotten and crumbling, and when Mercer's eyes flicked to the stranger's hands, he could see the fingers trembling where they grasped the hilt of a dagger.

_Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Crows, you have got to be __**joking.**_

-

Dar'zahn had put his foot down. After tonight, he was going to get off the skooma. His paws shook and his bones ached like they were being gnawed on by invisible rats, but he was going to give it all up. He'd been on and off the wagon in the past couple of years, every time trying his level best to get on the wagon and earn an honest day's labor. He'd recently found a cozy little village not far from Markarth he thought he'd like to settle down in- working in the silver mine was hard work, and certainly not very much fun, but you could raise a family on it, which was more than one could say about casual banditry.

First, though, he was going to have one last fling. There was only one man out on the main road, not too heavily armored, with no mercenaries or Imperial escort in sight. It would be easy.

Yes, just one more night, one more good haul, and he would be ready. There was a nice little plot of flat ground out behind Karthwasten; Dar'zahn thought he might try his hand at starting a garden. He'd never grown anything before. It would be interesting to try.

"Give me everything you're carrying or I'll gut you like an- _oh bugger_." The Khajiit, who moments before had been baring his teeth in what he must have thought was a fearsome snarl (undermined somewhat by the fact that most of his teeth were, in fact, missing), swallowed the threat and recoiled as Mercer pushed his hood back, taking a heavy, deliberate step in the cat's direction as he did so.

White-spotted ears flattened against the Khajiit's skull, hackles rising as he tried to edge back the way he had come. "G... Guildmaster Frey," he stuttered, lifting his hands in a placating wave. "Dar'zahn didn't recognize you with your hood up."

The Breton took another step toward him, drawing his sword free from where it lay belted at his waist as he did so. It looked sharp.

"What brings you to the Reach?" Dar'zhan inquired, casting wild looks in every direction. His ill-chosen mark took another step forward. Oh, yes, that sword looked very, _very_ sharp. Curse the region's impossible angles; there had to be an escape route somewhere!

"You're looking very dangerous tonight?" he attempted, desperately, as a hand clamped down on the scruff of his neck.

It was, he reflected an instant later, a long way down into the river.


	5. In Which Nalvyna Tempts Fate

Aicantar crept through the halls of Nchuand-zel, the pouches belted to his robes rapidly filling with soul gem fragments and discarded bits of scrap metal. His uncle disliked him wandering so far from the cleared sections of the Dwemer ruin, but the young Altmer had a mind and a will of his own. He needed specific parts, springs and gears and the like, that he simply could not find in the areas Calcelmo had already picked over. His spider was getting closer to completion by the day, but its clockwork parts were delicate, and attracted far more dust than he'd anticipated. Every time a crystal would become scratched or an escarpment befouled by lint, back he would go, scavenging what he could from the ruin and cannibalizing any wayward sentinel he could find.

That wasn't to say that he didn't treat the unsecured areas without the proper caution. The steamworks rattled and creaked like a bellows, or the breathing of some gargantuan metal beast, and it was easy to miss the smaller clicks and rustling of activated defenses. After he'd rounded a corner and nearly been impaled by a Centurion, some months ago, the Altmer mage had learned to attune himself to the sounds of the ruin and to listen for anything that was out of place.

_Shuffle-shuffle-clank. Shuffle-clank._

Like that. That was _definitely_ out of place. Aicantar froze, reaching internally for the well of magicka within him. His fingers scribed the first motions of a paralysis rune, and he edged closer to the source of the noise, placing one foot in front of the other as quietly as possible.

_Shuffle-shuffle-clank. Shuffle-clank._ He dearly hoped it wasn't a frostbite spider. Near the beginning of the expedition, he'd run on ahead and gotten caught in one of their webs: the accompanying guards had barely cut him down before one of the eight-legged horrors had started wrapping him up. It had been close enough that he'd been looking into its eyes, and as a result had suffered nightmares for weeks. He used to wake up on the floor, completely drenched in sweat, hollering in terror with the coverlets wrapped around his neck.

The mage shielded his eyes with a hand as he passed over a steam vent. The sound, he decided, was coming from one of the guardian-sphere dispensers near the far wall, and a little of the apprehension went out of his spine. Maybe it was malfunctioning, and he'd have a chance to study the machine caught inside without it trying to take his head off. _That_ would be something!

Caught up in the excitement of the moment, he should have been watching where he was putting his feet: the toe of his boot caught on an exposed chunk of sheet metal, and sent it clattering to the ground with a sound loud enough to wake the dead. He cringed, biting his lip, foot poised in midair, and waited for the proverbial (or perhaps literal, considering his current location) ax to fall.

"Hello?" a tinny voice said, from somewhere within the dispensary. "Is someone there?"

Aicantar blinked, mouth opening in surprise. Had... had the Guardian Sphere just _talked_ to him?

"If someone's out there, answer me," the voice said, its tone pleading. More rasping came from inside the wide metal tube; it almost sounded as if someone was grinding a steel hasp against it. That, he supposed, would be the sword attached to its arm? Risk be damned, he had to get a better look. If it attacked him, he'd just hit it with as many Destruction spells he could think of, and run.

"Did you just say 'hello'?" he inquired tentatively, as he neared the source of the noise. There was no response for a moment; even the sound of its struggling had ceased. The moment stretched to the point where he'd almost managed to convince himself he'd imagined the whole thing, and then:

"Aicantar? Is that you?" His heart caught in his throat. _It knew his name._ How... how was such a thing possible? Could the clockwork automatons communicate somehow; had the spider in his chambers, by some freak of chance, managed to transmit its location back to the others?

Oh, and _here_ was a thought: had the machines been listening in on the excavation the entire time? If they could coordinate an attack, it would certainly explain how so many of them seemed to turn up in areas the teams were working on, but that level of sophistication was _surely_ beyond even the capabilities of the Dwemer.

Or so he would have believed, up until that moment.

Planting his hands against the front of the dispensary (Eight, it was _warm_; whatever was jammed inside must really have been wedged in there), the Altmer stood up on his toes and craned his head toward the aperture at the top. Such an attempt was insanely dangerous, of course (a brief vision of a brass spike emerging through the entrance and into his eye briefly flitted through his imagination), but he needed to **know**. "Are you speaking to me?" he tried, hesitantly. "How... how do you know my name?"

"Aicantar, don't be daft," the voice retorted; "it's _me_. I'm stuck." _Scrape, scrape, rattle, scrape._

Aicantar's brow furrowed in confusion. Reaching up over his head, he forced his fingers into the slots holding the lip of the dispensary closed, and peered inside. What in Tamriel-?

Some foot or so inside the tube, a pair of copper-colored eyes were staring up at him from the gloom.

"AAAAAGH!" the high elf screamed, lurching backward. His heel caught on the hem of his robes and he stumbled, landing on his backside with a hard and undignified thump.

"Hi," Nalvyna said.

The mage grabbed his chest and wheezed in pure shock (he was _not_ frightened, he reminded himself furiously; she had taken him by surprise, that was all), trying to get his furiously racing pulse back under control. Adrenaline still buzzing along his spine, making his knees wobble, he crept back to the tube and -_carefully_ this time- looked inside again. Sure enough, there was a dark elf wedged in there, the tube so snug that her arms were crushed up against the sides of her head. From what he could make out of her face, in so deep a darkness, she looked decidedly contrite.

"How in the name of Auri-el did you get _in_ there?" he spluttered, once he was capable of forming syllables and sentences again. She jigged up and down in response, the tube acting as a resonating chamber for every tiny movement.

"I was looking for a place to hide," she said, in a very small and embarrassed voice. "Somewhere he wouldn't think to look. But I think my belt's caught on something and I'm _cold_ and _hungry_ and I can't feel my _feet_. I would _really like to go home now Aicantar for the love of the Divines __**get me out of here**_."

If the Dunmer hadn't sounded as if she were on the verge of hysterics, he might have been tempted to laugh at her, or keep walking, or some combination of the two. She had a knack, an absolute _knack_, for dragging people into trouble, and he didn't want to be added to that particular list. He wasn't completely without compassion, however, which was why he found himself dragging several large blocks of mortar and Dwarven metal over to the base of the dispenser.

Climbing on top of them, he inserted his head and a portion of his upper body into the tube, grabbing the thief by her wrists in an attempt to pull her up toward the entrance. He'd still have liked to know how she got in there to begin with, and more to the point, what she'd done with all the automatons that ought to have been in there.

After a great deal of maneuvering, hauling, and yelps of pain from both parties, she emerged through the lip and immediately lost her balance. Dark elf and high elf crashed to the floor together (Nalvyna on top, Aicantar on the bottom) in an ungainly tangle of limbs. There were cobwebs in Nal's hair, and one side of her face was a sheet of congealed blood, but her ensuing smile seemed to light up her entire face.

Locking her arms around her rescuer's neck, she squeezed, hard. "My hero!"

Aicantar made a gargling sound.

"Oh. Damn. Sorry." Releasing the Altmer, she scrambled backward and extended a hand to help him to his feet. The mage coughed hoarsely, one hand going to his throat and the other to his ribs. "Really, though, thanks a lot. I thought I was going to suffocate in there."

"Whoever you're hiding from must be pretty terrifying," her rescuer croaked, glancing back at the empty tube. "Who did you annoy this time- the King of Worms?" It wasn't entirely a joke. He'd heard some of the stories (well, _rumors_, if you wanted to get technical) about her adventures in the Reach; Nal answering in the affirmative was not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

"I _wish_," the Dunmer said, rolling her eyes and shuddering. "Let me put it this way: I would rather fight a resurrected Queen Potema, nude and with my bare fists, than deal with M..." -she caught herself, hastily- "...with the person in question when he's upset with me. Or anyone." She fell silent as they walked, and then added, almost as an afterthought: "Which I have done. Incidentally." Fixed with a disbelieving, golden-eyed stare, she quickly amended her statement with "Well, if someone had _told_ me she knew how to cast entropy curses, I wouldn't bloody well have gone in, would I?"

"I never have any idea whether or not you're telling the truth, when you say things like that," Aicantar protested. She only smiled up at him as they stepped through the door to Understone Keep.

"And you never will, precious." Long-fingered, griseous hands patted at belt pockets, and the thief's face screwed up in annoyance. "_Ancestors_. I forgot, I was going to deliver something to Eltrys. Wait right here; I'm just going to run to the Shrine of Talos and back." Aicantar opened his mouth to reply (perhaps to ask a question, perhaps simply to respond in the affirmative), but the Dragonborn was already gone, vaulting clean over his uncle's enchanting station as she went. The last thing he heard before she disappeared around the corner was: "I owe you a drink!"


	6. In Which Mercer Follows The Screaming

It had taken nearly a day and a half, but the stone spires and gleaming, metal-capped roofs of Markarth loomed at last before Nalvyna's compatriot and pursuer. Jagged shadows stretched across the low stairs, mica glinting in the stone where they weren't completely covered by moss; he covered them two at a time in great, leaping, determined strides and blew past the gate guards before they had a chance to stop him. Or even react at all, come to that.

Standing flatfoot and perilous on the narrow, cobblestone street, Mercer applied a cursory glance to either side and frowned in confusion. The market streets were usually filled with people- travelers coming and going; men and women hawking their wares at brightly-colored stalls; the din and bustle of city life in every shape and color. Instead, he was met with only a few scattered guards and Silver-Blood mercenaries, by turns patrolling or socializing drunkenly outside the inn.

One of the latter category, however (a burly, dark-haired Nord, one side of his face twisted and stippled with scars), was familiar to him- a relief, considering how few things seemed to have been operating in his favor during the past few days. Catching the sellsword's eye, he motioned toward the shadow of the gate with a nod of the head.

"Yngvar," he said, once his target had gotten within earshot.

"Mercer," the Nord responded, inclining his chin slightly in subtle greeting. "Don't see you in Markarth that often." His eyes flicked to the side as one of the city guard passed by, lowering his voice lest they be overheard. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for someone." The master thief outlined Nal's basic description, as simply as possible, and arched an eyebrow in surprise when the mercenary laughed- a short, humorless bark, but a laugh all the same.

"Had a feeling she was one of yours," Yngvar remarked, one corner of his mouth curving up to expose a canine tooth. "Troublemaker. Asks way too many questions for her own good."

Mercer, naturally, couldn't disagree. "Is she around?" he inquired. She had _better_ be; if the elf had gone haring off again just when he'd finally managed to catch up with her, there were going to be **_consequences_**. The question earned him another short, humorless laugh, as Yngvar the Singer indicated some unseen point up the road, jabbing a meaty thumb over his shoulder.

"Hard to miss her," he said. "Just follow the screaming."

Mercer followed the path with his eyes, forestalling a blank 'What?' as he realized that... yes, he _could_ in fact hear one hell of a commotion over there, and it was heading in his direction. He ought to have known she wouldn't be able to keep her head down; how someone like Nalvyna had managed to become a successful thief to begin with, he would never understand.

The source of the noise, he discovered a brief time later, was a considerable crowd of people. It at least explained where all the townspeople had gone: they were clustered around the edges of a guard convoy, perhaps seven or eight in total. The guards themselves were occupied with restraining a large, furiously wriggling shape in their centre- and it didn't take long for him to realize that the shape was a kicking, screaming, thrashing Dragonborn.

She was being held aloft at waist height, two guards to each limb, and although her hands were tied, the binds didn't seem to be doing much to help Markarth's finest. Every once in a while she'd surge upward in an attempt to free herself, and some poor hapless bastard would get clocked in the face with a lashing foot or knee. She'd actually headbutted a few of them, _through the helmet_ no less, and through it all was supplying her audience with an unbroken stream of furious curses.

"...put me down, you backbiting, double-crossing, worthless piece of refuse!" she screamed in the ear of the guard holding her right arm. "Your mother was a rabid skeever with mange! Her family thought you were so ugly, she died of shame when you were born! I'll bite your legs off, you snowbacked goat-humper!" A column of fire lanced through the air above the guard's head, causing about a third of the civilian audience to flee, screaming, away from the scene of the arrest. They'd maneuvered Nalvyna in such a way that her Shouting wouldn't be likely to harm anyone (the fire breath was flashy, but didn't accomplish anything other than scorching a rocky overhang), but had apparently been unable to gag her.

Mercer's heart went out to them. Really.

"_From my __**cold, dead fingers**__!_" she hollared, as the guard on her other side did what he could to divest her of the bow and quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. It was an empty threat, of course, but earned the guard another crashing blow from the back of her head. By then, they had nearly reached the lip of Cidhna Mine, though it was beyond him how they planned on getting her in there without setting themselves up to be incinerated, crushed, or gods knew what else.

"_Help, help, I'm being repressed-_"

Nal's screaming cut off as abruptly as if it had been cut with a knife, and Mercer jogged up a set of cut granite stairs for a better vantage point. She'd gone completely rigid, face frozen in an enraged snarl, as a cowled Breton stepped hastily back from her. Ah. A paralysis spell, then. Clever, though he wondered why they hadn't tried that to begin with. It certainly would have saved them the trouble of listening to her yell... which, come to think of it, might have been the point. Perhaps they'd wanted to give the denizens of Markarth a show. It wasn't every day a _bona fide_ heroine got pitched into the mines.

"You're doing this to me on _purpose_, aren't you?" Mercer grumbled, to no one in particular. "You must think this is absolutely hilarious, you gargantuan Daedric bitch." He cracked his knuckles for emphasis, rolling his neck from side to side, and glanced back in the direction of the general trader as the guard captain hefted the Dunmer's rigid body in his arms and stalked off into the cave mouth.

"Right, then," he said.

He was going to need some rope.


	7. In Which The Dovahkiin Is Caught Up With

Nalvyna did not like paralysis spells. It always felt like there were tiny insects crawling inside her skin when the magick wore off, and her fingers stayed numb the longest, so easing the horrible, burning itch was never as easy as it seemed. She'd tried to keep track of how many twists and turns the guards dragged her through on the way down to the cell block, but the angle of her head was all wrong- she mostly just saw armored feet, condensation-dampened wall, and Guard Number 2's sweaty armpits.

As scenery went, Nal thought, she'd had better.

When they'd neared the cell in which she'd be staying, apparently the mercenaries had decided it was time for payback for all the trouble she'd given them on the way in. The man dragging her -an absolute bear of an orc, the jagged scars from what looked like a saber cat's claws running from his jawline to shoulder- had turned her around, hefted her up so that her head was pointed at the floor, and started... well, for lack of a better term, _shaking her_. Money pouches, an assortment of pilfered jewelery, and most of her lockpicks went raining down around his boots with a series of merry little plinks and plonks. He shook her harder. The attempt merited one gold-plated knife, several soul gems, a folded-up tunic, and a half-dozen assorted and sundry potions.

It was at that point that the guards started placing bets.

_Shooka shooka CLANK._ Bollocks, she'd really _liked_those elven bracers, too. The enchantment had helped considerably when it came to her (frankly deplorable) pickpocketing skill. She would have laughed when all the gold bars came tumbling out onto her captor's foot, had she been able- his sudden, pain-filled yelp and subsequent swearing had left her with a fleeting sense of justice meted out. It was just a shame it hadn't been the hagraven head. Where had she left that thing, anyway-?

By the time they'd sorted out all her belongings and removed whatever was left over (at least they hadn't _cut_ her armor off; she would have been really livid at that), most of Nalvyna's blood had settled in her head. As a result, she nearly fainted when they set her upright, clad only in her undershirt and some ragged, coarsely-spun breeches. So much for dignity. So much for _respect_. She'd killed how many Forsworn encampments for this stupid town, and this was how they repaid her? That was _gratitude_for you, yes sir.

And that was even before they'd pitched her into the cell itself, which was barely wide enough to lie down in- not that it mattered whether or not she could lie down, considering the glyph locked her spinal cord as rigidly as a steel rod, and it was an effort even to bend her arms or move her head. She wasn't certain how long it had taken the spell to subside enough for her to even sit up properly- five minutes; maybe ten.

The first thing she'd tried after she'd managed to stagger upright, of course, had been to attempt Shouting her way out of her cell. It was a fool's errand. Unrelenting Force just passed harmlessly through the bars, splashing against the far wall with a crash and a shower of rock dust, and a moment later the jailor down the hall had made it explicitly clear that if she tried something like that again, she'd be looking at an arrow in the throat.

She supposed she ought to be grateful they hadn't simply stoppered her mouth after ensuring she couldn't move, though they'd certainly had enough presence of mind to re-tie her hands upon returning her to the cell. Bastards must have gotten wind about that incident in Solitude, when all she'd had was a toothpick and a ball of twine. Of course, she'd also emerged from the escape tunnel directly onto the Legion parade grounds (she hadn't thought Tullius was _capable_of turning that shade of red. Good times), so perhaps that wasn't her most shining moment.

"Hey, Dragonborn!" a voice bellowed, mockingly, from the cell next to hers. "Think you could Shout me a decent set of blankets? I think the seams are coming out of mine!"

"Oh, shut up, Rolf," Nal muttered back, sourly. If it wasn't the cold stone and the damp that killed her, it'd be either the back-breaking labor (she'd gotten blisters inside of the first hour, much to the amusement of the guards) or her fellow convicts' unending snark. She might have been able to stand it if it had been _good_snark, but apparently your average Markarthian criminal had a sense of humor the size of a pea.

Every prison had a weakness, however. She just had to figure out what it was, and how to exploit it. 'No one escaped from Cidhna Mine', indeed. If the Forsworn could do it, then so could she.

Something moved, at the far edges of her vision. It was just a flicker, up where the chiseled walls of the mine met the ceiling, but it caught her attention. A bat, she thought, or perhaps an unusually large moth. It was nothing to get excited about, except that it was the first thing she'd seen inside the prison that wasn't trying to exploit, pummel, or murder her. She squinted, stumbling to the bars of her cell, and tilted her head in an attempt to get a better look.

Nothing. Ah, damn it, as if things weren't bad enough, now her eyes were playing tricks on her. That was just fa-

-The something moved again. It was closer this time, following the curve of the wall- a sort of fluttering, caught by an errant draft. None of the guards seemed to have noticed it, but then again, none of the guards were in the habit of looking up. Why would they? There shouldn't have been anything to see.

Nal squinted, eyes tracking back and forth, trying to pierce the gloom through sheer force of willpower. She was no Khajiit, but she had decent enough night vision. If she could just...

All the color went out of the dark elf's face, and she stumbled back against the far wall as her heart went into overdrive. _Or I could stay here,_ she thought, her internal voice taking on a decidedly panicked pitch. _It's a perfectly nice prison, lovely really, the food is... well, it's shitty, but I could get used to it if I really made an effort, and this cell could positively homey if it went through a little redecorating. In a few years, I might even start to hate it less._

Mercer Frey was hanging from the ceiling.

She could barely see him, attired as he was in his work greys, but the Guildmaster was undeniably there, all the same. He was attached to some kind of harness, clinging upside down to the ceiling like a spider, and had his head and shoulders twisted around so he could look down into the narrow stretch of cells. With the cowl of his armor pulled down low over his head like that, she could see only about half of his face: the curve of his jawline; the arch of his lips; torchlight briefly reflecting off one grey eye.

He did not look happy.

As she watched, he detached a hand from the roof (was he wearing _climbing gloves_? where would he even get those from?), looked straight at her, and pressed a finger to his lips.

She forced herself to look at the floor, the hair on the backs of her arms prickling, and tried not to shake. Things were bad enough already; she really, **really**didn't want to know what Mercer would do to her if, after all this, she blew his cover.

Nal couldn't even hear him approach. She saw something large and black, in silhouette, drop to the ground out of the corner of her eye, but the only things reaching her ears were the crackle of the torches and the distant ring of pickaxes on stone. He must have been using a muffle spell to conceal his footsteps; she couldn't think of any other reason why a drop from that height would be completely soundless.

There was a guard heading down the block, torch in hand- he didn't notice the figure sneaking up behind him; didn't bother to do anything other than bang his mace on the bars as he continued on his way.

_Fifty paces. Twenty paces. Ten._

Nal carefully studied the wall, unable to suppress a flinch upon hearing a muffled thud outside (and then, shortly after, a _much larger_one). She only allowed herself to turn around upon hearing the rasp of keys in a lock; the door to her cell opening. Steadying her frayed nerves, the elf took a deep breath, preparing to volley off the apology she'd been rehearsing ever since she'd woken up in Markarth.

She never got the chance.

A gloved hand clamped down over her mouth, hard enough to bruise. The other fisted in her shirt and drove her back against the wall behind her cot, her head rebounding painfully off the stone as a result.

"You," Mercer snarled in a voice so low it was barely audible, their faces positioned so closely she could feel his breath on her cheek, "have a way of _unnecessarily complicating_ things."

_Oh shit,_ Nalvyna thought; _I'm going to die. _

She was all too aware that with the guard incapacitated, and the next patrol several minutes away, if Mercer wanted to snap her neck, he could probably do it and be gone before anyone even had a chance to notice him- much less raise the alarm.

He wasn't choking her, at least not that very second; she grasped desperately at the knowledge in the hopes that she might not be quite as doomed as she initially feared. His grip on her mouth was painfully tight, however; the miniscule hooks in his gloves catching and digging into the flesh of her cheeks as he squeezed.

He sounded like a wolf when he growled, she thought, and prayed the similarity wasn't due to a shared desire to rip her throat out.

It took an eternity for him to move, releasing his grip on her face one finger at a time. The blood rushed back to the afflicted areas with a prickle of pins-and-needles, and she knew she'd have marks to show for it later (if, she amended ruefully, there _was_ a later). He kept the hand at her chest where it was, though, wrapped into her undershirt in a death grip, and as a result had to shift his weight when she slid downward. The dark elf tried to merge with her cot, pressing her back as far away from the Breton as possible, so that she found herself in more of a reclining position than a sitting one. His closeness was making it difficult for her to breathe, either from nervous apprehension, the hand that had been stopping her lips a moment ago, or merely his superior weight. Perhaps it was all three. Whatever the reason, she'd better come up with an explanation (or an apology, or a plea for her continued existence) _fast_; Mercer's face was a thundercloud of barely-subdued rage.

Normally, Nalvyna would have taken umbrage at being intimidated- it was how her endless reservoir of snark had originated; as a defense mechanism. If people thought you were a babbling idiot, chances are, they were less likely to believe you were an actual threat. It made the dawning looks of comprehension people got, usually right before you stabbed them in the face, endlessly more satisfying.

Unfortunately, in this case, she could hardly blame Mercer for being furious: the fault was entirely her own.

Worse, the problem with snark-as-a-defense-mechanism was that she didn't know how to turn it off.

"Have I mentioned I find competency incredibly attractive?" Nal squeaked, snapping her teeth shut on it a fraction of an instant too late. She found herself wishing the Guildmaster had used her vocal cords for lute strings after all. Shit, shit and fuckdammit, where had _that_ come from? What had made her think that was _even remotely _the proper response to being physically menaced by the head of the Thieves Guild? And why, in the name of Azura, WHY had it chosen that precise moment to free itself from the confines of her mouth?

She was suddenly acutely aware that she was now lying flat on her back, while a master swordsman who'd just broken into the most secure prison in Skyrim (and who was, lest she forget, _not happy with her_) was more or less sitting on top of her. Her arms were still bound behind her back, and his weight was pressing her knuckles painfully into the hollow where spine met hip, the discomfort making her clench her jaw when he shifted his weight. She tried to ignore the mounting heat in her cheeks, and half-wished he'd just stab her and get it over with before she died of shame.

The Breton propped his forearms against her chest and bent over her, carefully pitching his voice so that it wouldn't be heard beyond the confines of her cell. Slowly, his mouth curved up into a thin, white-lipped smirk, exposing his canine teeth: a predator's smile, utterly devoid of humor.

"You don't say."

He drew the words out, slowly; each syllable marked with a definite period. The razor-blade smile metamorphosed into a sneer as he hauled her head and upper torso off the cot, not _quite_ shaking her, his eyes typhoon-dark in the torchlight. "Do you have any idea," he hissed at her (his voice a low rasp she felt in her ribs), "_any idea_how badly my plans have gone to Oblivion, because of you?"

Nal thought about it for a minute. "Is it... is it a 'nine' or a 'ten' on the scale of 'fucked up beyond all recognition'?"

Oh, fuck her smart mouth, fuck it to Coldharbour and back; it really WAS trying to get her killed.

"I finally had that whore **cornered**!" Mercer _was_ shaking her now, spitting the words out through teeth clenched so tightly, she feared they might crack. "She's probably long gone by now, and all because I was forced to chase you halfway across the country!" He paused for breath, dragging her a little further upright, and added: "I was _mugged_. By a _Khajiit_. On the way here."

Nalvyna clamped her teeth down on her lower lip at the sheer offense in his voice. She was _not_ going to laugh in Mercer's face, _she was **not**_.

Thankfully, with that statement, her attacker seemed to have exhausted the worst of his immediate wrath. She was fairly certain she didn't like the calculating look that had replaced it, though. In her estimation, the calmer the master thief got, the more dangerous he was.

"Do you know why you're still breathing?" he asked her, jabbing a gloved finger into her clavicle. The Dunmer shook her head- quite honestly, as it happened, but she didn't quite trust herself to speak. Particularly considering her knee-jerk reaction was to answer him with "_you'd miss me?"_. The Guildmaster's lip curled at her silence, and she almost breathed a sigh of relief. That, at least, was a facial expression she was familiar with. "It's because, as much as it _pains me _to say it, I really do need your help with this mission. Assuming, of course," he rasped out, fiercely, "it isn't too late already."

He let her drop, rocking back on his heels slightly. Her legs were still trapped underneath him, of course, but at least the terrible pressure on her rib cage was gone. When she tried to roll over, assuming that most of the immediate danger was past and he was going to let her up, he forestalled her with a hand on her bicep.

"Don't think you're off the hook," Mercer said, in a very low voice. His eyes, illuminated by the guttering torch outside, were typhoon-dark. "You're going to do _exactly _what I tell you from now on. Anything I say, whenever I say it. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal."

"For your sake, you had better _remember _that." He shifted his legs over and stood up, checking the hallway before glancing down at her hands. "I think it's time we got moving. The warden's going to be wondering where that guard went soon enough."

Nalvyna rolled off the edge of the cot after him, nearly tripping over the prone Silver-Blood mercenary in the hallway as she went. Turning her back to Mercer made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but she knew better than to second-guess him when he gestured at her with a dagger. There was a tug, and the leather straps that had been binding her wrists fell away; she rubbed them vigorously in an attempt to get the blood circulating again as the older thief clipped himself onto the rope that dangled from the ceiling.

He wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her by the woven twine that served as a makeshift belt with his feet barely touching the floor, and made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

"You don't have any climbing gear, so pay attention. Put your hands and feet _exactly_ where I do. If you fall on someone, I'm not going to be the one to bail you out."


	8. In Which Karliah Gets Impatient

As it so happened, Nalvyna did not, in fact, fall on anyone, though there had been a couple of close calls. Once, without thinking, she had grasped a handful of dangling roots instead of the ropes bolted to the stone. They'd torn completely loose when she put her weight on them, a miniature shower of pebbles and dust cascading down in their wake, and she'd suddenly found herself sliding, suspended by the fingers of her other hand.

Mercer, close beside her, had snatched the back of her shirt as her feet went out into empty space, using his own weight (namely, a knee jammed into a nearby crevice) to crush her back against the wall. They crouched there in tense silence, watching the area below for any sign of agitation from the guards. When some of the dust landed on a passing mercenary's shoulder, Nal was fairly certain her heart stopped beating- particularly when he paused, raised a hand to his shoulder, and cast a confused glance at his fingertips. She didn't dare breathe, even when one of the guard's fellows (seated at a table nearby) suddenly sprang to her feet, scattering cards and Septims alike, and accused the people arrayed on the other sides of the platform of being cheating bastards.

With the first guard's attention temporarily occupied, Mercer finally relaxed, gesturing hurriedly for Nalvyna to keep moving. The withering look he shot her as she looped her ankles back into the rope required little translation. She was, needless to say, much more cautious in her choice of handholds from there on out.

Eventually, of course, the rope would have to give out. In this case, it descended a low curve and disappeared around an unusual bend- a seam in the wall, about twelve of fifteen feet above the ground, that was concave when it looked as though it should have been convex. She fumbled at the lip and found herself slithering down a natural fissure, snagging at steel loops bolted into the stone as she went. The last five or so feet terminated in a sharp drop, and she found herself curling onto a roll across the wide, ordered paving stones and bronze gridwork of Dwemer architecture.

Mercer was not far behind, winding the climbing ropes around his shoulders in huge loops as he backed out of the hole: common sense, she supposed, if one wanted to keep that particular weakness in the mine's security a secret. Considering the line of work they both went in for, she supposed it was a very, very _lucrative_ secret.

Heat whuffed at her from the steam vent at her feet, making her arms prickle. She would never get used to the accursed, humid Nordic cold- it leached into absolutely _everything_, insulated or not, and she noticed its bone-deep chill even more acutely when she'd just come in out of it. She could feel it lurking in the stone beneath her bare feet, even here in the oppressively Stygian closeness of Dwarven ruins.

Armor, badly in need of patching but familiar, collided heavily with her shoulder from behind, followed by a belated and heavily sarcastic "Catch". She shrugged into jerkin and leggings with something that almost approached gratitude, the threadbare Guild leathers fitting around her like a second skin.

"Stowed the rest of your crap outside," Mercer said from somewhere behind her, with an accompanying rattle-click of metal against metal. She didn't doubt that when she finally got them back, her belongings would be notably fewer in number... but hell, she had no right to complain, particularly considering this was the man who had just freed her from prison (and who had very kindly deigned not to rip her eyeballs out. She couldn't say she would have been as gracious, had their positions been reversed).

She hadn't gotten more than a few steps down the walkway, however, before his hand caught her by her armor straps and yanked her to a halt.

"Where do you think you're going?" the Guildmaster asked. The inquiry bore the distinctive, subtly menacing tone Mercer reserved for when he was not _really_ asking someone a question. She glanced back at him as he leaned in, shoulder to shoulder, and inclined his head slightly so that he was looking straight into her face. "I told you," he said, lowly; "you're not off the hook just yet." Stepping back, he slouched his shoulders so that the heavy loops of rope slid downward, onto his forearms, regarding her with hooded eyes.

There it was; the axe she'd been waiting for him to drop, subconsciously, ever since this whole ridiculous debacle began. Nal did her best not to sweat. She had a hard time looking away from his hands, where he rolled the knotted ends of the rope nonchalantly back and forth between his fingers. It reminded her of the times she'd caught sight of him working back in the Cistern: he had a habit of rolling a coin across his knuckles when he was planning something.

_Finger, finger, finger. stop. Finger, finger, finger, thumb._

"Hold out your hands."

By sheer good fortune, Nal somehow managed to stop herself from reflexively asking him what he meant, tentatively doing as she was told. He couldn't have been planning on hacking them off, after all; he'd just mentioned that she was alive because he wanted her intact.

Pressing her wrists together with one hand, Mercer began winding the length of rope around them with the other. Over and under, around and around, periodically tugging the ends through with a series of decisive yanks. He was careful not to lace them so tightly that her circulation was cut off, though she doubted she'd be able to free herself without assistance (or something conveniently sharp). In spite of the fact, she couldn't fail to notice the visual similarities to a hangman's noose, and reflexively tried to twist and flex her fingers. The attempt was met by a quick, stinging slap, and a reprimand not to move.

He tied the rope off with teeth and hand, giving the knot a few experimental tugs before he was satisfied enough to loop the trailing ends around fist and shoulder, effectively leashing her to his arm.

"Since I apparently can't trust you not to wander off," he said, smoothing his free hand down the stubble of his cheeks, "I'm implementing countermeasures." The lopsided, toothy grim he flashed at her, before heading down the walkway himself, was not _quite_ a leer... but Azura strike her if it wasn't close. "Come on."

The Dragonborn bit back a sigh, followed the tugging at her wrists, and tried to convince herself that the warmth mounting in her cheeks was only due to the steam.

-

Half a country away, in a considerably colder and less comfortable tomb, a cloaked and hooded shape stood up abruptly from its hiding place. "All right, that _does it!_"

The sudden movement and noise startled a flock of partridge from their roost, whirring up through a hole in the ceiling as Karliah stamped her feet, flung down her bow, and planted her hands firmly on her hips. One of them -a particularly well-fed and rotund male- had, moments before, been perching on her head.

"This is getting ridiculous!" she accused the statue, half-buried in snow, to her left. "How bloody long does it take two people to navigate a maze?" She kicked at the stone effigy, swearing extensively in an obscure Mer dialect as her boot connected against its unyielding surface.

"_Broo_?" a voice burbled from above.

"Don't YOU start!" the violet-eyed Dunmer snapped, jabbing an accusatory at the ceiling. Snatching her weapon from where it had fallen, she stormed off in the direction of the puzzle door. Element of surprise be damned; her patience had a _limit_.

"Mercer, you traitorous dog, **where are you?!**"


	9. In Which There Are Dragons

Mercer supposed, with a sort of grudging inevitability, that it would have been too much to ask for the ride back to Windhelm to pass without incident.

He'd been huddled in between several canvas sacks of what he suspected were potatoes, casually rifling through things that weren't his. It was impossible to sleep, despite being closer to dawn than midnight; the cart jounced over the cobbled road with bone-rattling force, every vibration ratcheting straight up into his spine. From the scenery, he guessed that they were not long past Whiterun; long enough on the road, and the scenery started to blur together.

It had been tricky getting out of the Reach with a convicted murderer (even if she _was_ innocent of that particular crime); they'd almost been caught twice by the city guard while angling toward the front gates. Ordinarily he would have simply stolen transportation out of the reach (possibly dispatching the previous owner in the process), but he disliked pushing his luck with the Silver-Blood family. He might need to return to Markarth some day, and did not need to add any more fodder for their wrath.

The wagoner had shot Mercer a very strange look when he'd approached (expected, perhaps, considering he _was_ leading the Thane of the city around by her proverbial nose), but wisely shut his mouth when a small pouch covertly changed hands. It wasn't, Mercer explained in an undertone, really any of the man's concern. He was simply retrieving some stolen assets.

So there they were, smuggled away in a rickety cart that might have been on the verge of falling to pieces entirely, on their way to Solitude (Mercer, of course, would have preferred a straight shot to Windhelm, but the driver was adamant about his deliveries), with the master thief thumbing through a wide sheaf of Nal's correspondence. Bounty notices, invitations, a very battered and marked-over map, fawning letters of gratitude- well, at least that explained where all the coin she'd been bringing in was coming from; he wondered how she even found the time for half of this rubbish.

He was even more curious about what these people would think if he let it slip that their so-called hero was a kleptomaniac who spent her time hanging around a bunch of criminal lowlifes. Perhaps one of these days he'd spread the rumors himself; watch for how folk reacted. People generally didn't like it when their idols got dragged down to Nirn, all their little failings and missteps laid out for everyone to see.

It was part of what made the dragging so _very_ satisfying.

The source of his troubles was perched on a crate directly across from him, trying her best to look nonchalant as she idly flexed her hands. He frowned, and gave the rope in his hands a sharp tug, almost dragging the elf into his lap as the cart went over a particularly jarring bump. He smirked as she scrambled to keep her balance; if Nal didn't think he realized she was working on loosening her binds, she was more of an idiot than he thought.

Her eyes settled on the papers in his hand, narrowed slightly, and then widened in an expression that was suspiciously similar to panic. Wrenching her eyes away from the parchment, she cast a glance around at the surrounding area, trying and failing to look nonchalant.

"So," she said, loudly clearing her throat, "tell me again about Karliah."

The Guildmaster tipped the papers in his hand and shook them a little, dislodging a small booklet from the pile. It was bound in what looked like hide, tied with oiled sinew, neat black print stamped across the cover in a language he didn't recognize. Nalvyna's eyes tracked its movements as he turned it around in his hand, much like how a dog followed a particularly enticing treat. "Not much else to tell," he said. "She was one of the best thieves I've ever seen- stubborn as all hell to boot. Couldn't resist stirring up trouble, and she always tried to drag everyone else along with her." He arched an eyebrow at her. "Remind you of anyone?"

Nalvyna blinked, temporarily taken aback. "You think I'm a good thief?" She sounded as if he'd just told her the surf actually rolled _away_ from shore.

"I think you have _potential_," he retorted, sharply. "Whether it actually _develops_ into anything depends on whether or not you can learn to keep your head down, your mouth shut, and remember who's **running the Guild**." His mouth twisted into a frown at her sudden, intent stare. "If you're fishing for praise, you're looking in the wrong place. Go ask Brynjolf; he apparently thinks the moon shines out of your ass."

He let the booklet dangle tantalizingly from thumb and forefinger, just out of reach. "I have to ask. What, exactly, is this?"

"It's nothing," Nal responded, much too quickly. She twisted around, pretending to listen intently to something off in the distance. "_Absolutely nothing_. Did you hear that?"

"All I heard was the sound of your bullshit," Mercer shot back, narrowing his eyes. Rocking back, he planted a foot on her chest, casually pinning her just beyond arm's length as he flipped the cover open. The color drained out of Nal's face and she jackknifed from side to side, attempting to dislodge his leg (without much success).

"Seriously, Mercer, I think I heard something." Her voice had climbed at least an octave, ear tips turning a delicate shade of pink as he glanced from her down to the open book. "Listen, just put it down for a second."

The Breton ignored her completely, eyes flicking from the page, to her steadily darkening face, and back down again. In truth, he did hear _simething_; a kind of whooshing noise off in the distance, but dismissed it as wind over sere grass. "The Adventures," he read aloud, "of Ulfric Stormc-"

It was at that moment that the dragon showed up.

He had only a moment's warning as something huge went sailing past, its shadow covering the entire cart, the horse, and several feet of the path to either side of them. The sweep of its cream-colored wings nearly bowled them over, as the nag hitched to the front of the cart screamed in panic.

"Thank Azura and all the Divines!" Nalvyna cried, as she rolled out of the cart (narrowly avoiding being crushed by falling cabbages as she went); "I'm saved!"

The servant of Alduin, armor-plated in shades of black and burnished gold, crouched in the rut-wet field and waited for Nalvyna to approach. It was slow going, as she had to haul herself up, dodge the stamping feet of a panicked horse, and check to make sure she was in one piece, all without the use of her hands. Mercer could swear that, beneath the arch of its wings and the shadow of its bulk, the dragon was tapping a claw on the ground. He crept around to the back of the wagon, and slid a hand under the fallen crates for his sword.

**DOVAHKIIN.**

The force of the wyrm's voice nearly flattened him. This wasn't some horrible, horrible fluke then; it really _was_ searching for someone matching the elf's description. Oh, wonderful.

Distantly ('distantly' because his ears were still ringing) he could hear her respond, the words unfamiliar but the vocal pitch definitely not. Mercer tried not to scream. As if things weren't bad enough, she had to go and _harangue it_?!

"He says his name's Leopold!" Nal yelled back, over her shoulder.

More ungodly, deep-toned words. The Dunmer nodded politely, glancing back over her shoulder again.

"Apparently he's supposed to eat me!" Brief pause. "I don't think he means in the good way!" Another brief pause. "He says it's nothing personal!" She began edging away from the dragon's snout, trying to maintain eye contact and avoid tripping over anything at the same time. "I would _really appreciate it_ if someone were to untie my hands, Mercer!"

Nalvyna was getting heartily sick of being picked on, by the universe at large and dragons in particular. She suspected she ought to be used to it by now- these days she could hardly go for a pleasant little stroll around the Rift without tripping over one of the overgrown lizards (sometimes quite literally; she still vividly remembered the day she'd sat down on what she'd thought was a moss-covered log, only to have it stare up at her with a pair of bright yellow eyes). It had been a very long trip, and she would have dearly liked to finish it without being chewed, stepped on, frozen solid, or scorched.

Alas, she reflected, as she vaulted over the cart and narrowly avoided taking the wagoner's head off, it seemed the world was just not cooperating.

She wondered why the legends and songs never seemed to involve the Dovahkiin running in ever-widening circles, while screaming her head off. She was doing quite a bit of that these days; it was threatening to become a defining character trait.

Nal jerked to the left as a blast of frost carpeted the heath, where she'd been standing not a moment before, and tried to think of a plan. The process went something like: _Nalvyna Sondryn! Your hands are currently tied, and you've got about a twenty-foot length of spare rope to work with! You are in an open area, you have the advantage of better maneuverability, you're a master of improvisation, and you still have the ability to Shout! There is a multi-ton dragon coming up on your behind, and he would like to rip you a new asshole- what are you going to do?_

It took her inner voice only a split second to come up with the answer: _TRY NOT TO DIE!_

Mercer, meanwhile, had slipped over to the far side of the cart, where the wagoner was currently huddled with his arms over his head, shaking like a leaf and -if his hearing did not deceive him- trying not to cry. The Nord barely even glanced up at the thief's approach, though he did reach out to yank at the Guildmaster's arm when he popped his head up to see how Nal was faring. He had to admit, she really was quite... was 'flexible' the word he was looking for?... as he could think of comparatively few people who could manage a triple-axle spin, landing on their feet no less, when they were trussed up with rope and fighting a fire-breathing monster.

"**FUS RO DAH!**"

He barely ducked in time to avoid the shockwave whistling over his head, and grimaced. Woman needed to work on her aim, though.

"What are we going to do?" The wagoner's voice was quavery and weak, peeking out through his fingers at the Guildmaster as if the grey-haired Breton actually gave a crap about his safety. It was an apt question, however, and Mercer contemplated it for a moment, fingering the edge of his blade before allowing himself a decisive nod. That could work.

Sliding back down into cover, he reached out for one of the oilcloth satchels he'd loaded up before leaving Markarth. The Nord beside him followed his movements with a mixture of hope and apprehension; thinking, no doubt, that Frey had come up with some ingenious solution.

He blinked, dumbfounded, when Mercer pulled out two (slightly dusty) bottles of mead.

Tossing one bottle to the Nord, he raised his own in a mocking salute.

"What do you say?" (_"UNTIE ME YOU ASSHOLE UNTIE ME UNTIE ME"_) "Twelve Septims on the big one."


	10. In Which It Rains Sweetrolls

For the first time since the dragon had arrived, Nalvyna was beginning to think she might actually have a chance against it. Her sides were beginning to ache, true, but her attacker was much larger and slower than she was, even when he was in flight. If she could just keep dodging out of the way of his Thu'um while volleying off her own, perhaps she could wear him down before she collapsed stone dead from exhaustion.

Right. And maybe she'd sprout wings and a tail and call herself Akatosh.

She was _really_ beginning to miss her bow- buried, no doubt, beneath a pile of produce by now.

Maybe she could just lead the dragon all the way to Whiterun and- no, Jarl Balgruuf had made it explicitly clear after the last time she'd tried something along those lines that she was to keep all altercations with the large and scaly far, _far away_ from thatch-roofed houses under his jurisdiction. Hmmm. If she could lure him down onto the ground, maybe she could wrap the rope around his neck and-

_-And what, exactly, Sondryn? Garrotte a dragon? Ancestors, you ARE getting desperate._

Switching directions, she breezed past the wyrm's bulk as he ploughed into the ground behind her, ostensibly trying to crush her beneath him, and angled for where she could see a length of wrapped oilcloth nestled beneath the wagon. The ropes around her hands were scorched and frayed; if she could just get to her weapons, chances were she could free herself. Then she could see about turning the tables-

"OOF!"

Nal's feet snapped out from under her, breath leaving her lungs in a startled grunt, as Leopold stomped one massive foot down onto the rope as it whipped past him. The effect was predictable, more or less instantaneous, and dramatic: clotheslined, the Dragonborn's entire body stretched out horizontally in midair before crashing heavily to the ground. Nal was pretty sure she could see stars, or perhaps just cinders from her impending fiery death.

**I SAY, YOU DO HAVE QUITE A LOT OF STAMINA FOR SUCH A LITTLE THING.** Leopold said (or at least she _thought_ that was what he was saying; her grasp of the dragon language was still rudimentary at best. He might, for example, have been asking her where the latrine was. **JOLLY GOOD SHOW, DOVAHKIIN, JOLLY GOOD.** His head loomed into her field of vision (sweet lady Azura, she could feel her torso bounce with every one of his footsteps), and she gulped heavily at his wide and toothy smile. The dragon tipped his head nearly upside down so that he could look into her face, and she found that she could have counted his molars if she really wanted to. **NO HARD FEELINGS AND ALL THAT?**

"No," she replied weakly, trying to drag the breath back into her lungs. "No, I guess not." She tried to push herself upright, but her arms seemed to have been temporarily replaced with gelatin. "Oh, bother. Get on with it, then."

**RIGHT YOU ARE, RIGHT YOU ARE. I'M QUITE GOOD AT QUICK DEATHS, YOU KNOW; JOOR HARDLY GOING TO FEEL IT.** The dragon emitted a series of hacking sounds that she thought might have been laughter. **LITTLE JOKE.** The maw gaped, exposing a gullet that looked as if it had been lined with crushed red velvet. **TOODLE PIP-**

"Ahem."

Leopold flipped his head upright, glancing about in confusion as Mercer stepped out from behind the cart. He had his arms folded behind his back, and as he stepped over Nalvyna's prostrate form, the thief seemed to her the very picture of nonchalance. She drew breath, most likely to yell at him to run, but choked on it when she saw what he had in his hands.

"Mercer," she hissed in a tense whisper. "Mercer, put it down. _Mercer_, don't _touch_ that, it's the-"

"Surprise," the Guildmaster said, and swung the Wabbajack at the elder dragon's head like a bat.

There was a blinding flash-

-a pop-

-a cloud of smoke that smelled faintly of yeast-

-and the dragon, quite simply, _vanished_.

Nalvyna blinked at the space where it had been in utter astonishment, rubbing her eyes before looking from the dissipating smoke, to Mercer, and back again. "What the-?"

A soft pattering caught her attention, and she glanced up. A second later, and her mouth fell open, stunned into utter speechlessness as several small, slightly rounded objects rained down around them.

Sweetrolls.

"What the-?!" she spluttered, struggling into a sitting position as the destroyed ropes fell from her hands. "I just- wha- how did you-?!" Words failing her, she flailed her arms in concentric arcs as he twirled the Wabbajack once, like a baton, and carefully slid it back into its resting place amongst her belongings.

"Don't worry," Mercer said, the small and rather jingly pouch he;d been holding in his free hand; "I'm _sure_ you had everything under control."

Nalvyna just stared at him for several minutes, her face entirely blank as pastries thudded to the earth around her. A few rebounded off her shoulders and rolled into her lap, smelling faintly of sugar and magic. They did not try to bite her.

"Mercer," she said eventually, brushing crumbs off her arms and speaking in a slow, deliberate voice that might have been an attempt at suppressing hysterical laughter, "can I ask you a question? A very important question?" Copper eyes flicked up at him, and Nal tossed the shredded remains of the climbing rope aside as she scrambled unsteadily into an upright position. "Is my hair on fire?"

He glanced. It had, during the course of her frantic, scrambling maneuvers, come completely out of its tie, and framed her head like an unusually orange dandelion. Near the back of her head, a few tendrils of acrid-smelling smoke were rising.

"Little bit," he replied eventually, using thumb and forefinger as illustration. She swore emphatically and swatted at her head with both hands, brushing away several rather crispy strands in the process. There was a growing suspicion in the back of her mind, only reinforced by the insufferably smug expression plastered across his craggy face.

"You could have jumped in at any time, you know," Nal grumbled, doing her best to collect the remains of their scattered belongings. As she bent down to heft the heavy satchels onto her back, he stepped over and caught her chin on his hand, holding her fast so that she was forced to look him in the eye.

"I told you," he said, the amused of satisfaction almost -but not quite- gone from his voice, "you need to remember who's in charge."

The Dunmer glared at him uncertainly until he dropped her chin, then sighed and reluctantly fell into step behind him. "You're a dirty rotten bastard," she muttered under her breath, in tones of resignation.

Facing away from her as he was, she wasn't able to see Mercer's wry smile. "Yeah," he replied, raising and lowering his shoulders in a shrug. "I know."


	11. In Which There Is An Epilogue

**Epilogue**

* * *

It was raining by the time they got to Whiterun; typical for that time of the year, but deeply inconvenient when one took traveling into account. The wagoner had steadfastly refused to take them any further, citing reckless endangerment, the scorched and broken remains of his cart ("been in my family for years, it has!"), and the near catatonic state of his horse. Nalvyna was not entirely certain why the guards dissolved into sudden choking fits when she went past them, nor why Mallus screamed like a banshee and fled into his meadery when he spied the two thieves coming. She'd even waved at him, and the percieved snub made her brow furrow in a frown. Perhaps there was something on her face, or maybe the sweetrolls she was carrying smelled a bit more like impending doom than she'd initially thought.

At any rate, when the downpour finally hit (complete with window-rattling thunder, and visibility so low she almost walked into a door), they'd been forced to seek shelter inside the Bannered Mare. Mercer had, naturally, grumbled at this, but subsided when she pointed out that late-autumn thunderstorms in the area, while fierce, would often pass inside of an hour. Sometimes less.

She was warming her feet near the firepit and trying to get Saadia's attention when the door crashed open. This wasn't a particularly uncommon occurrence (Nords liked to make dramatic entrances- particularly if they were Battle-Borns, drunk, or a combination of the two), and she treated it with the customary indifference. At least, up to the point when its source stormed inside, bow in hand and dripping all over the floorboards, and proceeded to point a wrathful finger at her traveling companion.

"Mercer bloody Frey," the hooded stranger declared, "how _**dare **_you!"

Nalvyna blinked. The stranger stripped off her cloak and threw it violently to the ground (oh, gods, the _puddles_; Hulda was going to have a conniption if the planks warped), revealing a slim, violet-eyed Dunmer woman who looked as if she was on the verge of quite literally imploding with rage. "All those elaborate traps and clever deceptions, and this is the thanks I get? Do you have any idea how long I have been _waiting_?"

The elf gripped her head with both hands, voice wobbling in frustration and dismay. "You don't... you don't even **care**, do you?!"

Mercer stared at her as if he'd seen a ghost (which, in a way, he had, except most ghosts tended to be rather less shouty than this one).

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Karliah demanded. "I had a partridge on my head for thirteen hours, because of you! A _partridge_! **_Thirteen hours!_**"

His mouth slowly opened, then shut again, as he and Nalvyna shared a dumbfounded look before going for their weapons.

"**GET HER!**" they shouted, at the same time and nearly in the same tone of voice.

"Oh, hell," Karliah said, and whipped out through the door.

None of them noticed the black-robed gentleman sitting at the bar, as they passed him by.

Whistling a merry tune beneath his breath, twirling the stem of a cut rose between his fingers, Sanguine swung his feet back and forth and smiled.

It was always such fun to spend a night out on the town.


End file.
